BOOK REPORTS—

Total Control by David Baldacci

A young couple has the world by the tail. She’s a young and dazzling corporate attorney with a cherished daughter and a husband who is an accomplished techno-geek with a penchant for playing a deadly game. An ailing chairman of the Federal Reserve dies in a commercial jet crash. There is an attempt at a corporate take-over of the highest magnitude and FBI agent Lee Sawyer has to sort out the entire mess. It’s 692 pages of high velocity brain candy.


The Sultan’s Shadow by Christiane Bird

This is an interesting read set in the countries of Oman and Zanzibar in the 1800s. It takes a look at the life in the Arab Muslim aristocracy of the time where the fierceness of their tussles would make some wars look like arguments among Boy Scouts. Why was I not surprised? Yet today, Oman is a country with vast desert areas so bleak the borders between it and Saudi Arabia are not defined.


Escape by Carolyn Jessop

This is a piercing, first-hand account of a lady who was born into the radical, polygamist cult known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; an offshoot of the Mormon Church. At 18, she was forced to become the fourth wife of a 50 year old tyrant and had eight children in 15 years. Radical leadership of the cult turns life into a prison camp-like existence and her ultimate escape is a story ending you will want to cheer.


Kiss the Girls by James Patterson

Sometimes, when you finish a book you ponder the experience, knowing something special just happened. That was so in this, my first experience with author Patterson. It was a police story with craftsmanship and class.

But, at one point, while discussing his duty revolver, he describes it as a Glock. Glock doesn’t make a revolver. Later he describes clicking off the safety of his Glock. Glocks do not have manual safeties. These errors create serious damage to the author’s credibility and his editor's skill.. Regardless of those two flaws I am now on the prow for another of his offerings.